


Five Times Steve Lost His Watch...

by Nadin



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon - Movie, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 03:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15621126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadin/pseuds/Nadin
Summary: WonderTrev Love Week 2018Day 5 - Five times... and one time Diana found it





	Five Times Steve Lost His Watch...

**Author's Note:**

> This was a challenge and it was fun! I had so many ideas for this one.

**I.**

In retrospect, Steve knew that taking his father’s watch was not a good idea, strictly speaking. There were not many rules in the Trevor household, but there were a few. Don’t be rude. If you make a mess, clean it up. Don’t be late for dinner. Oh, and – don’t touch the watch.

It was a military watch gifted to his father for his service, his most prized possession. Steve was fascinated with the movement of the hands behind the thick glass, the sturdy leather strap, the commemorative inscription on the back, praising his father’s job. He also couldn’t resist the urge to brag about it during a game of war he often played with the neighbourhood boys, all of them giddy and armed with sticks and slingshots, sophisticated as they were.

He knew better than to sneak into his parents’ room and take it from the bedside table while his father was in the garage. Knew better than to strap it to his wrist and run out of the house before anyone saw him.

Alas, at the age of 10, he thought that all rules were meant to be bent and tested and pushed.

He didn’t think much about it until hours later when he came home for dinner – on time – and his wrist was lighter than it was meant to be and his father was furious.

It didn’t matter than he found the watch a few days letter in the bushes where he lay in hiding during his game. It wasn’t about the watch, his father had explained to him. It was about responsibility and breaking the trust. And finding it and bringing it back didn’t change the fact that he was stripped of his privileges and freedoms for a month.

**II.**

The war bore none of romance and adventures that Steve envisioned as a young boy when every battle was over before dinner. Victories were scarce and defeats were all around them, and from where he was standing, there was no end of it. No end and little hope, only weariness that had settled so deep in his bones that he could barely breathe sometimes. The weight of desperation was pressing down on them all, so much so that Steve couldn’t help but wonder how they managed to stand up straight.

He tried not to let it get to him, tried to look past the despair and hopelessness, but instead of The War To End All Wars, all he could see before his eyes was a war with no end.

“Steve!” A loud knock on the door gave him a start, Sameer’s voice awfully cheery at this godawful early hour.

Steve shoved the last of his measly possessions into a duffle bag and yelled, “Come on in.”

The door opened a crack and Sameer’s face peeked into a spartan room – an old house on the outskirts of London turned into a residential home for foreign soldiers offered no luxuries past the bare necessities as if to disillusion them from the get-go. As if saying – _this is all there is to it, suck it up_. He tried to look past it, but his own resolve started to slip after six months. He wondered how those people who had been doing this for years found it in them to keep going.

And then he remembered his father and his kind eyes and his tired voice, not exhausted but world-weary, and yet optimistic still. Never giving up. And it was worth taking another breath, making another step. One way or another, it was worth it.

“We’re going to be late,” Sameer urged him in a loud whisper, which was ridiculous, really. Even at this time of day, the whole place was bursting with clamour and commotion, loud voices spilling from other rooms and morphing into a buzz that swallowed the meaning of each spoken word.

“All done.” Steve heaved the bag onto his shoulder and gave the place that he chose not to call home one last parting look, eyes sliding past the crack on the ceiling and faded wallpaper the original colour of which was no longer recognizable.

Today, they were taking a ferry to France and from there a train to the German border.

The front.

He tried not to think about it, tried not to imagine what was waiting for them on the other side of that journey. More death, more blood, more things that no one should live through.

“Steve,” Sameer repeated.

“Yeah, coming.”

There was nothing here that was truly his, and maybe it was what made the departure so much easier even if their destination wasn’t something that he wanted to see.

And then there were the trenches and the cold and the fear the likes of which Steve could never have imagined. It was not the same as following the war from the safety of his home where it felt like something that was happening in another world altogether. Where it was easy to believe that the end was near and that maybe it was a big misunderstanding. It wasn’t even London where they said big words and made even bigger plans and there was hope attached to them all, somehow. No, here every thoughtless step meant death, every raid felt like the end of it all.

And that, Steve thought, was something that no one could ever get used to. No matter how hard they tried. No matter how long it lasted.

And now… now they were moving because they were under attack and the ground was shaking beneath them as the bombs exploded, so close to where they were that Steve’s ears would pop with every impact and tremor.

“Hurry up, Steven,” Charlie glanced at him over his shoulder, his red hair Steve’s only beacon in the sea of men clad in greys and dirty greens. It hid them alright, but it also turned them into a faceless mass, which terrified him because he knew that was how the enemy saw them – cannon fodder, not people.

He surged forward and then stopped short, realizing that something was wrong. Something was missing.

He yanked the sleeve of his heavy coat up and stared at his bare wrist. A shoulder rammed into him, and then another one, the bump accompanied by a quiet curse in a language he didn’t recognize. Steve didn’t care. His watch, his father’s watch that he treasured above anything else, above his own life even, was gone.

And then he was running back, tripping over the feet in heavy boots, moving unsteadily against the current of bodies who yelled and shoved and pushed at him. Who wanted nothing but make it through his day and he was an obstruction.

“Steve!” Sameer called from behind him, his voice drowning in the sound of heavy footsteps and laboured breathing and the whistling of bullets above their heads.

“Go!” Steve barked over his shoulder without pausing, his eyes trained on the ground, looking for a familiar object.

He couldn’t lose it, not here. Not like this. Not the one thing that reminded him of goodness and humanity because the person who gave it to him was an epitome of them both. Not when holding on to that watch was the only promise he had ever managed to keep.

“Steve,” Sameer tried again but was pushed forward, swallowed by the crowd.

Steve pressed on, frantic and panicky. There were a lot of things he would never forgive himself for but this? No, it couldn’t happen.

His heart was racing, his lungs burning, and in the impossibly cold air, the sweat trickling down his back under bulky clothes was making him shake all over.

He saw it five minutes later, near the wall of the trench, caked in mud but mercifully not stomped on. Steve picked it up, carefully wiping the worst of dirt off of the glass, his chest heaving from exertion and light with relief all at once. This far behind, he was alone, the buzz of the voices growing dull far ahead of him and an odd calm settled over the empty, eerily abandoned place.

When the bomb hit the spot right above him, he didn’t even realize what happened, except suddenly everything went black and terrifyingly quiet.

Two days later, Steve woke up in the field hospital with a concussion the size of Missouri and a separated shoulder, his body one enormous bruise. His watch was strapped neatly to his wrist.

“You’re one lucky son of a bitch, Steven,” Charlie shook his head when he stopped by later.

Steve grinned. And then laughed, making more than a few heads turn toward them.

He really was.

**III.**

They wanted him to be a spy. Everyone here could use firearms and throw a mean punch, but few could fly. Steve was one of those few, and not only that, but he was good, too. And the assignment – more order than a request – was flattering and terrifying in equal parts. He wanted to be helpful. He didn’t want to die.

His first mission went without a hitch even though his heart had been hammering so hard the whole time he was sure that every German officer in a five-mile radius could hear it loud and clear. Any moment, he expected them to grab him and drag him to the Keiser himself, or shoot him on the spot. He had seen them do that before. He only started breathing properly upon his return to London, once the gathered intel was safely passed on to his superiors.

It felt bloody phenomenal, finally making a difference. Yet, he had never been more terrified, too, and that was saying something, considering that they were stark in the middle of a war.

“We have to celebrate!” Sameer announced enthusiastically the moment Steve found him.

“That’s probably… not a very good idea,” Steve rubbed his forehead, thinking that a hot meal – or any meal, for that matter – and his own bed were a much more appealing idea.

“Come on, Steve!” Sameer pleaded. “Only for a couple of hours!”

Admittedly, Steve should have known better. Admittedly, he should have seen what happened later coming.

But he didn’t. Not until it was too late. Not until he and Sameer were running down narrow, snow-covered alleys, slipping on cobblestones, their breaths puffing out in white clouds, sharp and ragged. This was not how the night was supposed to end, Steve thought, taking another shortcut and trying to hear their pursuers. He didn’t dare look back for fear of tripping over something or other in the dark.

It started out pleasantly enough, with just enough cheap whiskey to soothe the sharp edges of his life and dull the perpetual apprehension that had been coursing through his system for months on end. Enough for him to lose focus. So when a game of poker reached the point where Sameer had nothing left to bet and asked Steve for help, Steve, feeling lucky and reckless and smart, and having nothing else to offer, gave him his watch.

Except he wasn’t lucky. Except the whiskey was stronger than he expected - and on an empty stomach, no less. Except he had nothing left to pay up when they lost and the watch—

“I… can’t…” Sameer wheezed, slowing down to a jog and then stopping. He bent forward, his chest heaving so hard that Steve thought he was going to have a heart attack. “Let… them just…”

He squinted against the snowfall, trying to see something in the dark, but the street dotted with the pools of light from sparsely scattered streetlamps appeared to be empty. There was no one in sight, not a movement in the shadows. Maybe ten blocks was enough distance for half a dozen angry Englishmen to give up.

“You know, for a soldier, you are in awful shape,” Steve noted, gulping chilly night air and shivering in a coat that wasn’t doing much to keep him warm in the temperature this low.

Slowly, Sameer straightened up, his breathing still laboured. “It’s all about this,” his said, tapping himself on a temple with his index finger.

“Oh yeah?” Steve pushed his snow-soaked hair back from his face. “Where was it when you--” he cut off and shook his head. “I can’t believe you lost my watch.”

The cold started to clear his head as well, and with it came a full realization of what had just happened. He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that he managed to lose something dear to him so foolishly, so stupidly. He swore under his breath, his hands curling and uncurling, flexing into fists, and wondered how much of a suicide would it be to go back and try to reason with those men, or attempt to buy it out. Not that he had any money, but it was worth a try, perhaps.

He remembered the day he tried it on for the first time, the watch heavy on his small boy’s wrist. Remembered the day his father taught to him how to read time, explaining the inner working of the ticking mechanism along the way.

It wasn’t just a watch. It was a time machine taking him back to when his life was simple and full of wonders and nothing bad could ever happen because his parents would never allow it. Because his parents were his gods.

“You mean this?” Sameer pulled something out of the pocket of his coat and handed it to Steve.

The watch.

Steve stared at it for a moment, unable to believe his eyes. His brows knitted together in confusion; it was like he expected it to disappear before his eyes.

“Why do you think they were running after us?” Sameer scoffed. Steve blinked. “What? You thought I was going to leave it behind?”

A smile broke across Steve’s face. He snatched the watch from his friend’s palm and fastened it around his wrist, chuckling, giddy with relief like a young boy who managed to avoid punishment for his mischiefs.

“You know that you can’t go back there, do you?” He jerked his chin in the direction where they came from.

Sameer waved his hand dismissively, a cheeky grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “We’re at war, my friend. One bar is not really a loss.”

**IV.**

Somehow, the fight was over before it even started, and the whole time, Steve was expecting to wake up, regain his consciousness, snap out of it – anything that would actually make sense to the scene unfolding before his eyes. Whatever this place was, and whoever these women were, they had managed to practically destroy two dozen of German soldiers with bows and arrows and swords. He had never seen anything like it. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could even imagine it, try as he might.

And yet, albeit not without a few losses of their own, they out-powered what was known to be the strongest, the most advanced army in the world to date. Had his own survival been of a slightly less of a priority, he would be happy to merely stare at what could only be described as the art of fight.

He thought they were going to kill him, too, right there with the rest of the soldiers. For wearing the same clothes. For being an outsider, the one who brought death to them, however unintentionally. If they did, he wouldn’t have blamed then.

They took him to the castle instead and made him take off his jumpsuit, soaked and heavy with salt water, stripping him down to his pants and a light shirt. They took his map and his compass and the book retrieved from Dr. Maru’s lab, his handgun and his pocket knife, and even his dog tags.

“Those—those are not weapons,” Steve tried to protest, but his attempt to make a grab for his watch ended up with a tip of a sword under his chin.

He raised his hands slowly and swallowed, trying not to breathe, his heart hammering fast in his throat. Looking around, he found no sympathy in the faces staring back at him.

The fact that they spared his life gave him hope but pushing his luck would certainly be the stupidest way to die.

His watch was not on him. It must have fallen from his hand on the beach but when Steve tried to ask about going back, he was promptly ignored. Unsurprisingly.

This time, he was certain that it was gone for good.

They took him to the infirmary next where a no-nonsense looking woman ordered him to take of his shirt, frowning at the blood stain on the sleeve. One look at the guards, standing like Obelisks near the opening of the cave, and he complied without argument. They ignored his questions, refused to respond to his request to have his belongings back, but he weren’t interested in his death, and if nothing else, this was somewhat comforting.

“I’m fine, really,” he tried to brush off a few nicks and bruises, but his words were promptly dismissed.

The woman whose name was Epione, as per one of the guards, applied a strongly-smelling salve to his cuts, a slight frown creasing her forehead although Steve could see no reason for it.

“Is she alright?” Steve asked quietly after a few minutes, unable to bear the silence any longer. “The daughter of the Queen…. Diana, was it?”

Epione looked up, her head tilted slightly to her shoulder.

“Of what concern is she to you?”

Steve raised his eyes to her. “I saw blood…. She saved my life.”

For a long moment, she merely looked at him, her eyes moving over his features but her own face betraying no emotion. Steve wondered if he’d crossed the line, if maybe he had said something offensive. God knew, he had no idea what the rules were here. What _anything_ was here, for that matter.

“She is alright,” Epione said after a moment, her fingers smoothing a bandage over a cut on Steve’s shoulder. He turned to her. “And so will be you.”

By the time Steve ended up in a domed cave with bathing pools, his pain had ebbed to a dull ache and his mind started to clear. He wasn’t scared of them, whoever they were. However, he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around what was happening here. A whole island not known to mankind? Surely he would have heard of it. Still, Steve was certain that if they wanted to kill them they would have done it already. And they wouldn’t have treated his wounds.

Now, the question was – what were they planning on doing with him?

He looked around the cave, taking note of the glow in the rippling of the water, the pools cascading into one another with a quiet whisper that echoed under the high ceiling and filled the whole space with a soothing hum.

He needed to get out of here. These women might not mean any harm to him, but he was running out of time. The _world_ was running out of time. He needed to deliver the book—

Steve cursed quietly under his breath, his face twisting into a grimace. The book. They took it with the rest of his possessions.

His stomach twisted. The compass and the map he needed but could do without, the dog tags were of no importance to him whatsoever, but without the book, they were doomed. The information containing in it could be crucial, even vital in changing the course of the war forever, and now it was taken away from him. After everything he had gone through to take it away from the people who wanted to use it against them all.

Fear and guilt stirred in his chest. At last, they had the kind of leverage they couldn’t even dream of, and he had lost it.

The footsteps outside of the cave startled him, and he turned around, not knowing what to expect, his heart pounding fast in his chest.

Epione entered the room followed by one of the guards, both of them carrying trays in their hands. Wary, Steve watched them set the trays on one of the flat rocks. One had a plate of food and a jug of water. And the other—

Steve crossed the cavern as soon as the women straightened up, snatching his watch from the silver tray. His compass and Dr. Maru’s book was there as well, and so were his dog tags and a map. The pocket knife, unsurprisingly, must have found a new owner.

Not that he cared.

“We thought you might be hungry,” Epione spoke, gesturing toward the food.

“Thank you,” Steve nodded absently, only then realizing that he was, in fact, starving. His fingers curled over the watch so tight that his knuckles turned white. He cleared his throat, eyes darting toward the rest of his belongings. “And for this.” He paused, taking a steadying breath, and then opened his hand. “How did you—where did you get this?”

“Near the water,” she explained. “One of my sisters found it. You said your name was Trevor.”

The same as his father’s, engraved on the back.

“Thank you,” Steve repeated quietly.

She nodded.

He swallowed. “What’s going to happen to me?” He asked.

The woman studied him, her head tilted slightly. “You should take advantage of the pools,” she suggested, ignoring his question as they all did before. “The water will help you heal.”

**V.**

Steve’s jacket fell to the floor, and with a quick flick of his fingers, Diana’s cloak followed suit. It cascaded down, a shapeless black mass pooling at their feet. Even with the fire burning in the grate, the room was cold. She gasped against his mouth when the cool air touched her skin, goosebumps rising along her bare arms and sending a shiver of an entirely different kind down Steve’s spine.

“Are you sure?” He breathed, his voice hoarse.

Someone else, someone better than him would have walked out that door and gone to their own room. Someone else would have reminded her that they were departing first thing in the morning and bid her goodnight and ended it there.

Someone else, someone who wasn’t him, would have done the right thing.

But Steve was tired. He was tired and he had wanted this, her, for so long that he could barely remember what it was like not to. For years, endless years filled with blood and death and despair, he did what was best for everyone else, and he felt good about it, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Now, it was not enough. Now, he needed something to be about what he wanted, what he couldn’t stand to live another moment without. He needed to kiss every inch of her skin and feel her hands on him. He needed to feel alive. Steve Trevor was not a bad man, but he was selfish enough to throw caution to the wind just this once. If only for one night. 

Diana nodded, her chest heaving against his, her fingers moving through his hair, over his chest with the urgency that reflected his own. “Yes,” she nodded once more and rubbed her nose against his before finding his mouth with hers again, the kiss deep and languid, a promise without words.

A low groan formed in the back of her throat when Steve’s hands skimmed over her shoulders just barely touching her, setting his blood on fire. Diana tugged at the hem of his sweater, inching it up, breaking away from him to take it off. He lifted his arms and allowed her to pull it off over his head and toss it aside, letting it fall on top of his coat. Her touch was tentative but not unsure, the fire in her eyes stealing his breath away.

She carded her fingers through his hair, smoothing it down, and Steve caught her hand and pressed it to his cheek, turning his face into her touch to kiss the palm of her hand.

“Your heart beats so fast,” she murmured, her other hand pressed flat against his chest.

“It does that sometimes,” Steve breathed, ducking his head closer to her, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Not often enough.”

God help him, she was so beautiful he could barely stand it.

He dipped his head and nuzzled into the hollow of her throat, breathing her in. Her skin smelled of cold and snow and still, even now, of the ocean. His fingers curled around her hip, soft leather of her armour smooth against his touch, as his mouth moved slowly up the column of her throat.

Funny how the things worked out sometimes. Steve hated this war. Hated it with every fiber of his being, the pain that it caused and everything that it turned people into. Whatever the outcome, no one was going to walk away from it unscarred one way or another. Sometimes he could feel his very soul weep from the unfairness of it all, for lives lost and hearts broken.

But without the war, he would never have met Chief, and Sameer, and Charlie, and try as he might, Steve couldn’t imagine that. Couldn’t imagine something this big and important missing from his life. Without the war, he would never have crashed on the island and he would never have ended up here, in this place, in this moment. His life would have taken an entirely different path and maybe it would have led to something wonderful, something that he would be grateful for. Yet, there was nowhere else he’d rather be right now. Not for anything in the world.

Diana’s nails scraped gently through the hair at the nape of his neck.

“Steve.”

Her voice was all but a whisper.

He kissed the spot behind her ear and drew back, heat burning in a tight coil in the pit of his stomach. What the hell was she doing looking at him the way she did? He brushed her hair back from her face, his thumb stroking her cheek, pleased to see that much like his own, her breath was nowhere to be found.

“Do you want to stop?” He asked quietly, searching her face.

“No,” Diana shook her head, her eyes dropping to his mouth. “No, I want--”

Her fingers curled over the fistfuls of his shit and she pulled him closer, her mouth crashing against his with enough force to nearly make him stagger backwards. Her lips parted against his, tongue sliding into his mouth, her body melting into his touch. Steve caught his balance, hands framing her face as he kissed her back with hungry urgency, reminded with a painful pang that there was only so much time that they had.

Not enough.

Never enough.

Her hands slid down his chest and gripped his hips, digging possessively into his flesh. They were moving. He didn’t even know they were moving until her calves bumped against the mattress, the suddenness of it making him break the kiss as she lowered on the edge of the bed, pulling him down with her.

Steve sank onto his knees in front of her, a faithful worshipper of a goddess that she was, drowning in her eyes, in the goodness radiating off of her, in the beauty beyond anything he’d ever seen. She swept her hand through his hair, watching him as he watched her, her lips swollen and her gaze glazed over. He loved knowing that he had he effect on her, loved seeing her cheeks flushed and knowing that it was his doing.

“Diana…”

A small nod, and Steve reached for her boots.

“Let me--” she started, her fingers brushing over his and sending a wave of heat through his body.

He glanced up and offered her a small shake of his head. “Show me.”

Her lips curved, and at that moment, there was no war he wouldn’t have charged into for her. No hardship he wouldn’t have overcome just to have her look at him like this and never stop till the end of time.

Her hands guided him to the clasps and buckles, holding her boots in place. A little fumbling born out of confusion and impatience, and he pulled one off her leg, setting it aside on the bare hardwood floor. Leaned forward and kissed her knee, the inside of her thigh, earning a muttered response that he was fairly certain wasn’t even in English. He didn’t care.

The second boot surrendered easier and Steve pressed a kiss to her other knee, inching very slowly up her thigh until Diana’s hands caught his face, making him look up at her again.

She nudged him back and stood up, pulling him to his feet with her. A hand curled around the back of his neck, she pressed her mouth to his once more, her fingers working slowly on undoing the buttons of his shirt. He let her, his own hands gliding up her arms, over her shoulders, through her hair. He’d wanted to do this for so long. Wanted to taste every inch of her skin, kiss her until she forgot her name.

His shirt fell down and his undershirt followed suit.

She didn’t ask him about the scars painted across his skin, but her fingers traced them gently, drawing a map of life she knew nothing about. Life that he would give to her and for her in a heartbeat. Steve’s palms slid up her arms, fingers running along her clavicles, trying to memorize her with his touch. Unlike his, her skin was smooth and soft, not bearing pain written across it, and he was grateful it.   

And then Diana stepped away from him, and before he knew to protest, she was reaching back and around herself.

His eyes widened as he watched her remove her armour slowly, allowing it to slide off, gorgeous underneath it. He wanted to help, wanted to know what held it in place and where she had to pull to make her skirt fall down, but all he could do was stand frozen to the spot and stare, his eyes following the measured movement of her fingers on leather and fabric until she looked up at him again, her head tilted ever so slightly, waiting.

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, but didn’t move – didn’t so much as breathe – until she stepped toward him, reaching for him.

Steve closed the remaining distance between them.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, bowing his head until his forehead was pressed to hers.

“Is this what it’s like?” Diana asked, hands gliding up his shoulders and down his chest until her fingers closed around the buckle of his belt. “Between men and women?”

“Like what?”

“Like… fire.”

Steve heard her take an unsteady breath and gently pulled her hands away from his belt to unbuckle it himself. The damned thing kept getting stuck and now was not the right time for it.

He found her eyes. “Only when you do it right.”

Steve had been with women before. Women he cared about. Women that meant something. There were a couple he was certain her was in love with, those with whom he wanted to have a future. They were all but a shadow now, a memory faded at the edges. He had never, not once in his entire life felt the way he was feeling when Diana pulled him to her, their clothes crumpled on the floor and forgotten. When he kissed his way down her body, his name falling from her lips when his mouth closed around her, low moan morphing into a whimper. When she was everywhere around him, pressed beneath him among tangled sheets, moving with him. When he slipped his hand into hers, twining their fingers together, and she sighed against his shoulder, tucking her face into the curve of his neck.

He was not thinking about the past. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did, except for this moment and this woman and hot tension building up between and inside of them until it was almost too much to bear. There was only her, and her lips on his skin, and her heartbeat pounding straight into his chest. Like, _thank god_. Like, _finally_. 

“Angel,” Steve breathed when she arched into him with a shudder, her fingers spasming on his sweat-slicked flesh, words the meaning of which he didn’t and couldn’t know whispered into his ear. “You’re my angel.”

There was only Diana and this place and the night stretching before them, endless and impossibly short all at once.

Later, when the fire went out in the grate and the words had died down between them and the exhaustion grew hard to ignore, he slept, his whole body curled around her, his chest rising and falling slowly against her back. And for the first time in years, stranded in the middle of nowhere, in a small inn he didn’t even know the name of, he finally felt at peace.

\---

The grey dawn greeted them several hours later, cold and gloomy even though Steve knew that the sun would come out later, offering the light but none of the warmth. Too soon. Always too soon.

Rousing to awareness slowly, he sighed and nuzzled into the back of her neck, kissing his way toward her shoulder. Sated and warm, his body pleasantly sore, he felt more content in the cocoon of their covers than he had when there world had not yet been torn apart by the bombs and hatred and fear. How small this moment was, but how immensely treasured.  

Diana stirred against him, rolling onto her back to face him, her lazy smile so majestic that he wished he would take a photograph of it and frame it.

“Hi,” he whispered, brushing her hair back from her face.

She weaved her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her. “Hi.”

Later, when the sun came up and the town started to wake up outside the small window and the smell of food began to rise from the kitchen downstairs, they dressed in companionable silence. Shirts and boots and buttons and buckles, all back where they belonged. It would be over today, Steve thought as he searching for his discarded belt. One way or another, it would be over.

“Have you seen my watch?” He asked, his brows pulling together into a frown when his gaze landed on an empty bedside table.

Diana, who was busy wrapping leather straps around her palms, looked up.

“Your watch?” She echoed, confused for a moment.

“Yeah,” he ran his hand through his hair. “I left it right--”

Steve cut off, a cold pit opening in his stomach. Did he leave it here last night? He couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember much aside from more important things, and frankly, at the time, the watch wasn’t a priority.

He swept his hand over the surface of the bedside table as if there was a possibility that he simply wasn’t seeing it, and then his hands slid into one and then into another pocket of his pants, knowing that it was pointless but needing to make sure. As expected, they were empty.

“Steve…” Diana started.

“It has to be here somewhere,” he muttered under his breath. Turning on his heel, he crossed the room, nearly tripping over his own feet.

His coat was now hanging on a peg on the back of the door and he patted his hands over it, checking the pockets even though he knew it was of no use. Did he still have it after they crossed No Man’s Land and entered Veld? Did he have it on him as the town celebrated their newfound freedom? His memory kept coming up blank. Nothing about last night was about time. If anything, he wanted – _needed_ – to forget that time even existed.

And now—

“Steve.”

He looked up at and saw Diana watching him.

He knew he couldn’t leave without it.

Except he had no idea if it was even here. The bloody watch was almost as old as he was and somehow was still working, and he could not – he absolutely could not – lose it. Not when they were so close to getting out of this mess, out of this nightmare.

When he gave Steve his watch, his father had asked him to take care of it. Steve knew that he meant to be a joke. It was a good watch, but it was still just a watch. He didn’t meant the same way as when he said, _Take care of your mother_. But there was nothing else left of him. Their home gone, their lives all but distant memories. And this one thing, this one small thing…

Steve went back to the bed and pulled the covers off, his hand sliding over the sheets. In the back of his mind, he was aware that to Diana, he must have looked insane. Like he had lost his mind. He knew that, but right now, he couldn’t think about it.

It was not there. It had to be, but it wasn’t—

His hand slid into the narrow gap between the mattress and the headboard, breathing a sigh of relief when his hand closed around the familiar shape, the worn edges fitting perfectly in the palm of his hand.

It must have slid off when he was too busy to pay attention.

Steve stood up and smoothed his thumb over the glass that got a few scratches here and there over the years of constant wear. Still here. Still ticking.

He only noticed that Diana walked over to him when she reached for his hand and took the watch from him before fastening it around his wrist, the touch of her fingers almost as soothing as the familiar sensation of worn leather against his skin.

“Sorry, it just—it means a lot to me,” Steve murmured.

Diana looked up, her gaze searching his face. “You could tell me later, yes? Tonight?”

His heart leaped into his throat, and he had to remind himself to breathe. Leaning close to her, he rubbed his nose against her cheek, his hand sliding around her waist to rest on the small of her back, coaxing that brilliant smile out of her again.

“Tonight,” he breathed.

 _Tonight_. There wasn’t a hit of doubt in her voice, only steady assuredness that settled the turmoil raging inside of him. Certainty of knowing that they had many more nights to come, an endless string of moments to treasure.

Diana tilted her head, her nose brushing against Steve’s before her mouth touched his. And he kissed her back, gathering her closer to him. Outside of this room, the real world was awaiting, uncertain as it tended to be. He could here Sameer’s voice and Chief’s gruff responses, close enough but not quite. Not yet. They still had time.

**VI.**

People always said that doing the right thing was hard.

They were wrong. There was nothing easier than doing the right thing. It was taking that first step toward it that required the strength and will that went beyond comprehension. It was knowing that one had to live with the consequences of their actions.

Or not live at all.

Steve was in love with her. He knew it last night. Knew it before then, before he even thought to consider it. She was love itself encapsulated, and he was drowning in her light. Had been for as long as he knew her. She was hope and peace and courage, she was compassion and kindness - everything his kind strived to be but never was.

And he was only a soldier. A soldier with a mission that had to come first.

It was the right decision and there was no hesitation in him even if making it was splintering his heart into more pieces than it was made of.

Ares was real. Diana was right all along and Steve tried not to think of how all of this could have gone differently if he had believed her from the start. There was no point in doing it right now, or he would drive himself mad.

They were running out of time and he was nothing against the God of War, but Diana was different.

She was their salvation.

Last night he wove a beautiful dream in his mind about what their lives could be after they won the last battle and restored peace. Places he would show her and things they would do, small moments stitched together into a beautiful canvas stretching before them for eternity. So naïve, so foolish…

He wanted to give her the world. The moon and the stars and everything in-between, but when it came down to it, his old watch the only thing he could spare. How ironic. He pressed it into her hands, knowing that she would understand why he had to do what he was about to do, the words that he wanted to say to her dying on his tongue until there was nothing left but, _I love you_ ripped straight from his heart.

He wished they had more time….

\---

Change was hard. No one had walked away from the war without scars buried so deep no amount of time could ever heal them. There were moments when Steve couldn’t help but wonder how it was possible that he had lived without war for 35 years and only two with it, yet on the other side of it, it was the one thing that he could remember clearly. There was something unnatural and twisted about it.

“Your losses don’t define you, Steve,” Diana had told him once, when he tried to put this odd feeling into words, but it all came out wrong somehow.

He nodded and didn’t argue, although the question remained – if his losses didn’t, then what did?

They stayed in London at first, for convenience more than anything else. Like the war, this place was more familiar to Steve now than the place on the other side of the ocean where he lived all his life. Go figure. How he was supposed to navigate this world, the one where he only barely missed his death, was another question, but he chose to file it off for later. After all those years of having to think ten steps ahead, he wanted to just be.

“This is what people do when there are no wars to fight,” Steve said one morning, a spatula in his hand and a grin that was a degree more self-indulgent than necessary spread across his face.

Diana eyed his attempt at an omelette with skepticism.

“Do they ever do it well?” She deadpanned, wrinkling her nose.

Steve’s jaw dropped. “Hey, I might not be a royal cook--” he started.

“Charlie wasn’t a royal cook either,” she interjected.

He huffed in indignation but failed to come up with a counter-argument. For what it was worth, Charlie was goddamn excellent when it came to cooking while Steve, well, wasn’t.

Steve had no memories of the night he flew German plane full of deadly gas into the sky and pull the trigger to save innocent people. He didn’t know what happened between then and the moment when he woke up at the hospital outside of Brussels, bruised but alive. Something must have, he was thinking one day, staring at his reflection in the mirror over Diana’s vanity table – which was the most ridiculous name for that thing, seeing as how she had no vanity whatsoever.

He raised his hand and touched his cheek and the man in the reflection did the same. His eyes were sharper and his hair was longer, and a haircut wasn’t a bad idea, perhaps, but otherwise… Otherwise, it was the same face he saw in a mirror hanging over a basin in their room in Veld on the morning after they crossed No Man’s Land as he shaved, not yet knowing where the day would take them.

Some days, it was easy. Other days, he didn’t recognize himself at all.

Diana appeared in the bedroom, pausing in the doorway for a few moments, watching him, as if knowing what he was thinking. Steve wouldn’t have been surprised if she did. She had always been good at reading him.

She crossed the room then, arms sliding around him from behind.

“We are going to be late,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his shoulder, her face next to him in the mirror as untouched by time as his own.

Steve’s hands closed over her forearms, the warmth of her presence calming him instantly.

“What happened to me?” He asked

“You lived,” she said simply.

Steve had no response to that. Some things were never meant to be understood. He could torment himself over the unknown, or he could accept it and live in peace.

She let go of him and stepped around him to look him properly in the face, hand reaching to touch his cheek, lean fingers skimming over his skin. Ten years, and he still couldn’t get enough of her, could never get enough of looking at her, touching her, kissing her. Every morning when he woke up next to her, it still felt like a dream.

“I have something for you,” she said, a lilt in her vice giving away nervousness that Steve couldn’t place.

He was about to ask what was wrong but she was already placing something into his hand, a familiar weight making his heartbeat stutter as he stared at his watch.

 _His_ watch.

He hadn’t seen it since the night on the airfield in Belgium ten years ago when he pressed it into Diana’s palms before climbing into the place. It must have fallen from her grasp some time during the fight, he figured. Steve had long given up on seeing it ever again, the idea of going back to that place and combing every inch of the ground entirely unbearable to him.

And now here it was, back with him. No longer ticking, but he could fix that.

Steve turned it over slowly, wondering if maybe—

But no, there it was, an engraving addressed to his father, familiar font and words that he knew by heart for as long as he could remember himself.

He looked up, stunned. “Where did you find it?”

“An antique store. With Etta, this morning….” Diana trailed off.

Someone must have found it, sold it, and then again, and then again until it made its way all the way here, somehow.

Steve swallowed, emotion thick in his throat. For some reason, having it back felt like they both made a full circle and were not back right where they started. Back to the moment that defined them both.

“Steve…”

He found her eyes again, her expression uncertain. A smile broke across his face on its own volition. His fingers still curled over the watch, he slipped his other hand around her waist and tugged her closer until there was no space between them, and the small worry lines in the corners of Diana’s eye smoothed out into nothing.

“Thank you,” Steve whispered before she could say anything else, brushing his mouth to hers.

There really was magic in this world.

**Author's Note:**

> Really hope you're having fun, folks!


End file.
